METEOR STORM

by David Capps

  “Trent, would you like to get settled into your room first?” John asked.

  “Oh there’s plenty of time for that later,” Trent said, “I’d rather get to know these fine young people better.”

  John directed us to the set of chairs near the front windows.

  “Carl, Tia, this is Professor Trent Colburn, specialist in ancient Eastern Literature, Sanskrit and several other ancient languages. Professor, this is Karl Koenig and Tia Harkensen. They have been recovering the information I shared with you.”

  “What a pleasure meeting you,” the professor said in a noticeable British accent as we shook hands. “John has informed me that your project is all hush-hush, so I shan’t press the matter. But I am fascinated by what you have found.”

  “We’re fascinated by the information, too,” I replied.

  “What fascinates me are the terms and language you are using to describe the ancient technology involved here,” Trent said as he sat down. “In the Vedas, the terms used for the ancient technology are characteristic of people who witnessed the machines and flying craft, but lacked the technical expertise to know exactly how it all worked. Your descriptions, in contrast to the Vedas, are very explicit and show an in-depth understanding of the science behind the technology.”

  “Well,” I replied, “I have some understanding of Electrical Engineering and Physics. That may account for the language.”

  “Oh no, my dear boy,” Trent said, “I’ve discussed this technology with PhD’s in Physics and Quantum Mechanics and they show nowhere near the technical grasp of the subject you two have shown. Whatever it is that you are reading or translating demonstrates an insider’s knowledge and familiarity with these advanced devices.”

  I glanced over at John. He shook his head slightly.

  “I wish I could be more explicit in our source of information,” I said. “But the risk to us is just too great at this time.”

  “Of course, of course,” Trent replied. “I suppose it is incumbent upon me to make the first step toward resolving the issue. I must therefore rely on your discretion in keeping what you hear completely confidential.”

  I glanced back at John. He smiled and gave a nod. I looked over at Tia. She agreed, as well.

  “I promise we will protect your information at all costs,” I said.

  “Excellent,” Trent replied. “I have a very dear friend, a Lama in Tibet, who is the guardian of the old knowledge. Many years ago, when I was studying under him, he took me to a secret cave, high up in the Himalayas. Inside were hundreds of ancient machines, some for producing electrical power, and some that flew in and out of the atmosphere. I believe he would agree to take us back to that cave if you are willing to go there.”

  My heart was pounding in my throat and I felt suddenly short of breath. I looked over at John. He simply smiled at me. John’s words from our first conversation came back into my mind: ‘We have resources you need and you have knowledge we need. Together we can make a difference.’ My mind was racing. “Would there be records of what happened during the last meteor storm?” I asked.

  “It is my understanding that there will be contiguous records for the last hundred thousand years in the cave,” Trent replied, “perhaps longer.”

  “If that’s the case, we could determine the date of the meteor storm,” I said. “That single piece of information would determine everything else for us. This is critical.”

  The look of satisfaction on John’s face told me everything I needed to know.

  I thought, here was the opportunity of a lifetime. “When would we go?” I asked.

  “You have to understand,” Trent replied. “This isn’t going to be easy. You’re looking at a two week journey on foot up into the 18,000 foot level of the Himalayan Mountains. There are no roads. It’s rugged and totally primitive. This is the only time of year we can make it up there.”

  “It’s worth it,” I said. “Count me in.”

  I looked over at Tia. “Me?” she said, “I hate camping. This is way over the top for me. I’ll stay here.”

  “I’ll have one of my security people go with you,” John said. “You’re too important to me to let you go alone.”

  “We can leave in the morning then,” Trent said as he stood up. “I’ll take a look at my room now if you don’t mind.”

  “This way,” John said.

  * * *

  John supplied a full set of clothing and boots for the journey, all in my size and already packed. I showered, shaved and gathered my travel documents after I awoke at a quarter to five in the morning. Breakfast was served at six and by seven we were on our way to the airport. We landed to refuel in Reykjavik, Iceland and then in Athens, Greece. We finally landed in New Delhi, India. John had a business there so the customs people were used to seeing his Learjet 45 and employees coming and going. They didn’t even ask if we were there for business or pleasure. They just processed our passports and passed us through.

  The security person was one of the men who accompanied me to the Clark Street Storage Facility. His name was Ed and all he would tell me was he was a former Navy SEAL. We were driven to a nice hotel where we crashed for the rest of the day and into the night. Ed woke me while it was still dark outside, and we left just as it was starting to get light. Trent seemed to have a lot more energy than I would have guessed.

  We drove the entire day and ultimately arrived at the village of Chitkul around dusk. That’s where the road ended. Trent had arranged for us to stay in one of the small private homes. I wasn’t sure about the local currency being used, but I suspected our stay was expensive.

  I awoke as it was starting to get light outside. I dressed and ventured out to get a better look at the surrounding area. It was cold and windy, but the local people were already moving around setting up their stands for the tourists that would enrich their community. Chitkul was centered in the Baspa River valley at an elevation of 10,660 feet above sea level. Towering above the small village were the snow covered Himalayan Mountains. I heard the dull ringing of small copper bells and looked over to see where they came from. A herd of shaggy white goats with spiraled horns crossed the main path through the village. I took a deep breath. The air was thin, but still laced with the scent of wild flowers mixed with the organic odor of goat droppings. In the background pulsed the churning sound of the Baspa River as it cascaded down the valley in a series of white rapids.

  Trent emerged from the house, looked around and drew in a deep breath.

  “God, I love this place,” he said. He looked over at me and smiled. “I’m glad you’re up. We have several arrangements to make before we can leave.”

  “Look,” I said, “I have some personal requirements that I need to discuss with you.”

  Trent stopped and looked at me. “Personal tent, no shared accommodations, privacy?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “How did you know?”

  “John,” Trent replied. “He didn’t say why. I didn’t ask. What else do you need?”

  “That’s about it, actually,” I said, “It’s personal and important to me.”

  “As I said, I didn’t ask,” Trent replied. He waved me along as he headed toward a relatively large wooden building. The walls were made from three foot wide by eight foot high panels placed between vertical support poles. The panels were ornately carved with differing designs worked into smaller panels within the main panel section. The roof was a metallic gray except for the entrance, which was graced with a wooden roof and moss covered planks, carved corner ridges and overhangs.

  We entered the wooden building, which appeared to be a shrine of some kind and removed our shoes. Trent walked swiftly to the center before a large wooden Buddha statue and bowed. He went straight to the side where a Buddhist priest sat. Trent bowed again and spoke briefly to the priest, offering him a small packet of local currency. The priest bowed in return and Trent bowed again and made his exit.

  “Blessing for the journey,” Trent explained, “necessa
ry for the cooperation of the locals.”

  Next stop was a barracks type building with another tin roof. Above the door was a sign, ITBP.

  “This is the Indo-Tibet Border Patrol, a para-military organization that controls the area from here to the Tibetan border, which is about fifty five miles up into the mountains,” Trent said. “We need a permit to travel beyond this point.”

  “Will we get anywhere near Tibet?” I asked.

  “Oh, my dear boy,” Trent replied, “we will travel well within Tibet.”

  We entered the ITBP office and Trent bowed before the officer at the desk. They spoke briefly and the officer leafed through a thin stack of papers. When he finished he shook his head. Trent continued talking to him using animated hand gestures and arm movements. The officer got up and walked over to a door in the back wall and knocked. He opened the door and spoke with someone inside the room and then waved his arm, indicating we should enter. Trent bowed again to the officer and we entered the inner office.

  An officer with applets on the shoulders of his uniform and a gold braid running from the right shoulder down under the arm sat at a large desk. Trent bowed again in front of the officer and stated his case. The officer questioned Trent about several things and then held his hand out. Trent pulled a wad of currency out of his pocket and handed it to the officer, who in turn pulled a paper form from his desk drawer, filled in some blanks, signed and stamped the form and handed it to Trent. Trent bowed again and we left.

  “Permits have to be applied for three months in advance,” Trent explained. “There is, however, an expediting fee that can be paid for immediate service.”

  “I see,” I said. “So even out here in the middle of nowhere money still works.”

  “Human nature, my boy, human nature,” Trent replied. “Next in line are the Sherpas.”

  Trent spent the next several hours interviewing Sherpas, locals who carried the equipment and supplies for people traveling up into the mountains. For each one Trent selected, a sum of local currency was paid.

  “Is it customary to pay them before they do the work?” I asked.

  “Oh, heavens no,” Trent replied. “This money goes to the family in the event we never return. The men get their pay when we get back.”

  “Swell,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that we might actually die on this journey. I was growing close to Tia through our work together and didn’t want that to end. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I had something to lose. Something that not only made me want to live, but made my life worthwhile. What was I doing risking that?

  CHAPTER 8

  The following morning I awoke at first light and joined Trent and Ed for breakfast, which consisted of eggs, tea and a hot gruel mixed with goat milk. It wasn’t bad. After we ate we packed our backpacks and said our good byes to our gracious host.

  I pulled my iPhone out of my back pack and started my GPS log. We were at 17 degrees, 53 minutes and 30 seconds North Latitude, 78 degrees, 5 minutes and 28 seconds East Longitude. I turned the iPhone off and stowed it in the back pack. There was no place to recharge the battery out here, so I had to be very sparing with its use. It had to last the whole journey.

  The six Sherpas Trent hired had all of the equipment and supplies lined up outside the guest house. They picked everything up and headed over the bridge on the north side of the village. The lush green grass of the valley soon gave way to rocks and moss as we gradually started our climb up into the Himalayas. All I had was the twenty pound back pack, but even that seemed like a huge load to carry. The air was thin at this altitude and I was quickly short of breath.

  “Breathe deeply, my boy,” Trent said. “You’ll gradually adjust to the thinner air over the next few days.”

  “Sure,” I replied, still feeling dizzy and weak.

  The Sherpas were carrying three to four times the weight I had and were showing no signs of being tired at all. I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. This journey sounded like a wonderful thing back at John’s cabin. Now I wasn’t so sure. My thoughts drifted back to Tia and the robot’s head and I wondered how things were going there. As I looked around at the valley and the mountains, my imagination began filling in what we had learned from the robot’s head. 65,000 years ago there had been highways and cities where now only wilderness remained. As rugged as the terrain was, trade routes and roads had brought spices and books from the Rama capital city, somewhere in this area, down to the Mediterranean valley and beyond. Exotic fruits and tapestries were carried in the other direction to grace the palace of Rama in its splendor and power. Yet after the meteor storm and the intervening thousands of years, no sign of any of the Rama Empire remained. The only possible remnant resided in a secret cave high up in the Himalayan mountains, holding the only hope we had of finalizing the date for the meteor storm and saving at least some of humanity from the cataclysm bearing down on us from outer space.

  We stopped around noon and broke for lunch. We dined on flat bread with some butter and an unidentified meat jerky and cold tea. It wasn’t much, but it tasted wonderful. The dizziness and weakness I was experiencing let up as we ate, but as soon as we started walking it all returned again.

  We stopped late in the day and the Sherpas erected the tents and started a fire to cook dinner. Trent, Ed and I sat in front of the fire warming ourselves.

  Trent leaned over to me and bumped my shoulder. “You did good today,” he said. “Tomorrow will be better, you’ll see.”

  “I can hardly wait,” I replied.

  Trent chuckled and Ed smiled. Ed seemed to be taking all of this in stride and hadn’t said a word all day. Ed was about 6’ 2” and around 240 pounds, all muscle. He kept his light brown hair short in a military crew cut, which accented his blue eyes and square jaw line.

  “Ed, you ever been to Tibet before?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. “I’ve been up this high in Columbia and Bolivia before, but that was a lot warmer than it is here.”

  “In the service or working for John?” I asked.

  Ed just smiled and stared back at me.

  “There are some things you are better off not knowing,” Trent said as he glanced over at Ed. Ed glanced over at Trent and then back to me.

  “I get it,” I replied, and that was that.

  Dinner was spiced lentils mixed with some of the mystery meat jerky over rice and some hot tea. The Sherpas sang for a while and played a string instrument similar to a mandolin. Trent stared up into the night sky watching the stars drift slowly by. There was no moon, so the sky was an absolute black with billions of sparkling stars.

  “Is that the Milky Way I’ve heard about?” I asked. “I’ve always lived in the city. I’ve never seen the stars like this.”

  “Indeed,” Trent replied. “Our own galaxy, edge-on view. Over there,” he pointed, “you see that group of stars in the shape of a tea pot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The constellation Sagittarius,” he said. “Beyond that is the galactic center, a huge, pulsating Black Hole surrounded by billions of stars. Everything rotates around the Black Hole, counter clock-wise viewed from the north rotational pole. The combination of the pulsing and the rotation form the spiral arms of our galaxy.”

  “And where are we in all of this?” I asked.

  “We, my dear boy, are but a tiny outpost near the outer edge of the galaxy,” Trent said. “I often wonder how many space-faring civilizations are out there.”

  People from Earth used to be one of them, I thought. “You think other worlds have people or other strange creatures on them?”

  Trent looked over at me. “Of that I am certain,” he replied. “Our ancient history is filled with descriptions of aliens and other-worldly visitations. Of course most scholars depict these things as myth or imagined angels or demons, but they are real nonetheless.”

  I noticed Ed was watching us closely. “And what do you think of the planet Mars?” I asked.

 
; Trent looked at me with a curious expression on his face. “I’ve seen a lot of very strange data about certain structures there,” he replied. “Am I missing something?”

  “There’s a lot more there than we’ve been told,” I said. “I happen to know for a fact that there is life on Mars.”

  “You mean actual bacteria, live bacteria?” Trent said.

  “You need to think bigger than bacteria,” I said. “A lot bigger.”

  Trent sat there with his mouth hanging open. Ed’s eyes widened significantly.

  The quiet of the night was shattered by an ungodly screeching howl, followed by a similar sound from the other side of the valley. It sounded like a mixture of something human and animal combined. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight out. The lead Sherpa hurried over to Trent, said something in his native language, and left immediately.

  “There are Yeti in the area,” Trent said. “We need to build the campfire up and double the guards around the camp. I’m afraid this conversation is going to have to wait for another day.” Trent and Ed got up.

  “Those things are real?” I asked. “What can I do?”

  “Try to get some sleep,” Trent said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  The screeching howls continued through the night, moving from place to place. Sleep didn’t come for many hours, but I finally fell into a state of unconsciousness.

  * * *

  The Sherpas had breakfast ready as I crawled out of my tent the next morning: more of the same gruel and jerky with some strong hot tea. It was actually a good start to the long day that lay before us. After I ate, I crawled back into my tent and recorded our position in my GPS log.

  The Sherpas broke camp and we headed off again. Today I still felt weak but the dizziness was starting to fade. By the following day the dizziness was gone and the weakness was also starting to fade. I was adapting to the high altitude.